Posted on 03/31/2010 3:04:35 PM PDT by TitansAFC
Ron Paul: Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way?
Getting down to the last two questions here…. Most people consider Abe Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we’ve ever had. Would you agree with that sentiment and why or why not?
No, I don’t think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided. For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have been available to buy up all the slaves and free them. So, I don’t see that is a good part of our history.....
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
As are you.
That’s it? A failed amendment to a proposed constitutional amendment that gave the south everything they wanted, but which wasn’t enough for them?
“That’s it?”
That’s a funny reply.
The fact an amendment was proposed to “make secession ILlegal” in the Constitution proves in fact such WAS legal.
Ridiculous. The Missouri Compromise, the Great Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and indeed the whole basis of the Sectional Crisis that led up to secession and the Civil War ... were about slavery, and the South's desire to expand it to new territories.
It is extremely difficult to imagine secession or the Civil War occuring, without the issue of slavery to drive them.
You can, perhaps, try to shift the focus to economic issues; but even there, it's all about slavery.
The fact is that the economic differences between North and South were absolutely driven by the fact that the South's economy was a slave-dependent agricultural economy. Without slaves.... the entire economic structure of the South would have been different.
For sure, the South recognized that the entrenched economic necessity for their slaves: the economic consequences of Abolition were explicitly named as a reason for secession.
You’re talking to a guy who is about as liberal as they come. I’ve seen r9 on many threads, of different kinds, and it sure seems he comes out on the liberal side a lot.
If slavery could have been ended peacefully and on a defined, reasonably quick timeline, it obviously would have been better all round for America.
But to allow millions of Americans to linger in slavery for several more generations while hoping and waiting for the institution to just "slowly fade out" is just a non starter, when such a core right (the right not to be owned by another) was at question.
So I fear that a violent path was the only one open.
No it doesn’t. All it means is that an amendment to an amendment making that explicit failed to pass. Despite that failed amendment within a failed amendment, the Supreme Court still found secession to be illegal.
I'm not defending the Confederacy for sure. I am wary, however, of history as it is written. Of course the greatness of Lincoln's speeches indicate an exceptionalism that is rare in any age.
It was more your statement that no-one doubted their right to secede. Obviously you were incorrect. And that's without going into the writings of men like Clay and Webster and Jackson and Buchanan and Lincoln who all disputed the right to secede under any circumstances, or men like Madison who believed it possible with the consent of the states.
Where in the Constitution does it tell us we can’t leave? Or even what the “process” is? Seriously, perhaps I just didn’t see it when skimming.
There is nothing in the Constitution that says a state can't leave. So secession should be allowed. But how? Nothing lays out a process for leaving. That process should be determined by looking at the Constitution as a whole. And since a state cannot join without the consent of the other states, and once in it cannot split or combine with another state or change its borders by a fraction of an inch without the consent of the other states, then its no stretch to conclude that leaving should require the consent of the other states as well. How else will the interests of all states be protected?
Nonsense. A belief held by a minority of senators that the amendment was needed does not mean that secession WAS legal. The belief held by a majority of Supreme Court justices that secession as practiced by the Southern states was not Constitutional carries far more weight.
True enough.
Yep, the Supreme Court reapealed it and was again revived later. But the Civil War marked the birth of the income tax. Perhaps even Lincoln had to bow to the law of unintended consequences.
Good points. Let me tell you something you are not told. Terrorist attacks are 100% SUNNI (Wahhabi sect) in this country . Iran is Shiite. They hate Sunnis.They kill each other in great numbers each week in Iraq. Sunnis are the body bombers . There are no known Iranian shia body bombers.
It is my absolute belief that Iran poses no threat to this country . It is the Sunni Wahhabi like the plane hijackers and Major Hussein that need removal from our shores and we can start in their Virginia Mosque which spawned all of these murderers and many more.That is my view.
Which makes for an interesting question. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the income tax as unconstitutional. Since there was no corresponding confederate supreme court then would an independent confederacy have had an income tax for a longer period of time? After all they would have needed a funding source of some kind.
I have followed this string and it was great. The intelligence and sophistication of these members is why I love FreeRepublic. I learned many new things about Lincoln and the real cause of the Civil war . thanks to all.
i, too, am awaiting some proof of the outlandish remark that the south turned down an offer from the lincoln administration to purchase all the slaves...i am appalled at the assertions made on this thread that have been pulled out of thin air...people, read your history...most of these remarks are not even being challenged. i never thought i would see such misrepresentation and prejudice against the southern challenge to strong central government that is laughingly called the civil war on this site.
I’ve seen secession/CW threads go well over 5,000 posts. Especially if Non-sequitur goes off on his Fort Sumter tanget.
tanget=tangent
"Liberal" as in, I'm not a slobbering idiot -- which a lot of you neo-confeds seem to be on the topic of the South's evil institution.
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